Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 June 21

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June 21

What does "scuttling like rats in the gutter" mean?

In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (film) Seraphine tells her reason behind killing Credence:

• Seraphina: He risked the exposure of our community. He has broken one of our most sacred laws.

• Graves: A law that has us scuttling like rats in the gutter.

What does "scuttling like rats in the gutter" mean? Rizosome (talk) 07:28, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The gutter is a likely place where rats can be found, without too much risk of exposure and an ensuing threat of extermination efforts. The verb to scuttle describes the disorganized and undignified way rats move when going about their business. The simile expresses Graves's dissatisfaction with having to operate in secrecy by likening this to what vermin do.  --Lambiam 08:35, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I struggle with the idea that rats could ever behave in a "dignified" manner. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:10, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Exactly the point made by Lambiam. --Viennese Waltz 09:12, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Except that dignity (hence lack thereof) is not a characteristic that's associated with rats (except maybe in some alternative cartoon universe). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:38, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

You aren't making sense. The rats are acting in an undignified manner. Whether they can or have ever acted in a dignified manner or whether rats can be imagined as being dignified isn't relevant. --Khajidha (talk) 15:35, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, I disagree that the rats "are acting in an undignified manner". Neither are they acting in a dignified manner. It's a paradigm that just can't be applied to such animals. (It's like saying a bookshelf is looking very shy, or guilty, or embarrassed.) Otherwise, you have to be able to state what a rat acting in a dignified manner would look like. Or if you assert they're always undignified, what is your yardstick? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:18, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Dignity is in the eye of the beholder, in this case the mental eye of the fictional user of the simile.  --Lambiam 08:00, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

"Said Rat in a dignified voice". The voice is dignified in this case, but could be interpreted as a dignified manner of speaking. Personuser (talk) 11:45, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Wiktionary:scuttle#Etymology 3 says: 'The word "scuttle" carries a crab-like connotation, and is mainly used to describe panic-like movements of the legs, akin to crabs' leg movements'. I'm not sure about crabs specifically, but it certainly denotes rapid and perhaps scratchy sort of movement. Alansplodge (talk) 10:20, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Past tense

Can 'did' be used to make verbs in the past tense rather than adding -ed to the verb in the infinitive? Dr Salvus 13:50, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

You mean like "the dog did bark"? It's grammatically correct, but you would never use it unless it's for emphasis ("the dog did bark"). Other than that, it's old-fashioned and poetic usage. --Viennese Waltz 13:57, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Dr_Salvus -- the Wikipedia article is Do-support. Most European languages don't have anything like "do-support" as it's found in Modern English. In early modern English, do-support ran rampant, and sometimes seemed to be almost displacing some basic verb tenses, but in current-day English, do-support is reserved for negative, interrogative, and emphatic uses... AnonMoos (talk) 14:30, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Or maybe in poetry. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:18, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate used "did" here Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 11:16, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

He used it just one time
So that his lines did rhyme.

--Lambiam 14:16, 24 June 2021 (UTC)}}

I'm under the impression that the use of "do" and "did", just to pad a poetic line to make it fit the metre, is looked down on. See Christopher Tolkien's comments on his father's use of "do" and "did" in this manner in early version of the Lay of Leithian in The Lays of Beleriand; unfortunately it's been a long time since I read it and can't point you to a chapter, let alone a page. Nyttend backup (talk) 14:24, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Oops, Baseball Bugs, I meant to ping you. Nyttend backup (talk) 14:24, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

It is used in law sometimes, particularly in criminal charges: Smith did murder 37 people with a fork. That's the old-fashioned usage Viennese Waltz also referred to. In normal conversation or writing it sounds ridiculous. There's an old thread about it here on RDL but I don't remember it as being very informative. 2602:24A:DE47:BA60:8FCB:EA4E:7FBD:4814 (talk) 11:03, 25 June 2021 (UTC)